


Aggression

by josephina_x



Series: Dimension 46’\-A [5]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Gen, One Year Later, Post-Series, Post-Weirdmageddon, See You Next Summer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-06
Updated: 2017-12-06
Packaged: 2019-02-11 05:52:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12928890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/josephina_x/pseuds/josephina_x
Summary: An hour from a day in the life of William Triangle Cipher, immortal alien space wizard, current summer resident of the Mystery Shack....Why, exactly, was he still putting up with the Pines family, again?





	Aggression

**Author's Note:**

> Fic: Aggression  
> Fandom: Gravity Falls  
> Pairing: n/a  
> Rating: PG-13  
> Spoilers: through the end of the series, and some of the books (Journal #3)  
> Characters: Bill Cipher, Mabel Pines, Dipper Pines, Stanley “Stanford” Pines, Stanford Pines | The Author, Wendy Corduroy, Other Gravity Falls Characters  
> Summary: An hour from a day in the life of William Triangle Cipher, immortal alien space wizard, current summer resident of the Mystery Shack. 
> 
> ...Why, exactly, was he still putting up with the Pines family, again?  
> Disclaimer: Not mine, not for profit.  
> AN: ...I’m not even sure why I’m doing this, anymore. Just roll with it? ^_^;;  
>   
>  _Author’s Note, 2018-Jul-29: This fic begins on the morning of Day 11 of Bill Cipher’s return. In the meantime, between the end of[Glitches](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12928743) (the afternoon of Day 6/7-ish) and this fic, several more days have passed. Stan hasn’t really seen Ford at all, but the kids have seen him once or twice in-passing while he’s been sequestered with Bill, so he knows his brother is alive, out, and about, at least. Stan’s not worried; he figures Ford would say something to either him or the kids if he ran into a problem with the cultists. In the meantime, Stan has finished thrashing out the majority of the mutual nonaggression agreement with Bill, at least on the definition of and proper agreement-acceptable responses to physical attacks and such. He’s still working on defining the ‘mental attack’ stuff with Bill, and if he hadn’t thought the kid was nuts _ before _..._  
>   
>  _Mealtimes have been getting less and less tense, and as of Day 8, Stan has started pulling Bill out with him into the living room for short one-to-two-hour stretches of time, outside of just mealtimes, sometimes with the kids around but usually they’re not. And up until Day 11, Stan has always made sure to be in the room at all times and largely within tackling distance of Bill whenever the kids are in there with them, though, just in case. Stan hasn’t has to drag Bill out of the room to force him to cool off (and let him rant himself from anger down to extreme annoyance out of earshot of the kids) for a little more than a full day now._  
>   
>  _This morning of Day 11, Stan figures it’s a good time to take the next step when Mabel says that she wants to wash Bill’s hair outside, and talks out some boundaries and limits to what he expects is going to end in a flat-out ‘no’ from Bill -- which will be good for all three of the kids, as far as he’s concerned -- but he doesn’t bother trying to outright explain the agreement to either Mabel or Dipper yet, since he’s not finished working out the last details with Bill. He figures he doesn’t have to, since he’s pretty sure that the kids won’t attack Bill if he doesn’t attack them first. Stan’s pretty much completely convinced by this point that there’s no chance that the ex-triangle is going to be the one to break the agreement they’ve got going first, so long as nothing drastic happens to change or upset that, for reasons. He’s planning on going through everything with all the kids straight-out once the agreement’s pretty much all worked out, and doesn’t see any reason to tell them before then; he sees no reason to explain things twice. So he walks Bill to the Shack’s gift shop (and checks to make sure he’s left the outside door open), and stops to let Wendy know what’s what and to keep an eye on things, just in case. And then Stan deliberately goes back inside, back to the kitchen table, and sits down to read the newspaper and wait for either Dipper and Mabel, or Bill (...or all three of them, bickering...) to come back in._

\---

Shooting Star had caught him with a smile and a promise.

...It hadn’t been a very _nice_ smile, but the promise had been okay. Very professional.

“If you don’t take a shower, I’m going to do it _for_ you!”

Fair enough. Bill could respect that.

So Bill had decided to take her seriously, and thus in response he had shrugged and said, “If you want to take two showers instead of one, Shooting Star, while I take none, be my guest.”

Shooting Star had puffed up like she’d been personally offended -- or challenged -- and that was when Pine Tree had walked into the kitchen and asked what was going on. Bill, sitting at the kitchen table, had proceeded to play with his can of beans with a spoon -- he’d found this was a lot easier when done while the can was _still closed_ , also resulting in less frowning from Stanley -- while Pine Tree’s initial question had led to a fast and furious back-and-forth between the kid and his sister. Then Pine Tree had turned to him to hash out the details of what he, Bill, did and did not like about showering, exactly.

Bill had already decided that he wasn’t doing any such nonsense again -- not until he had his own mentality completely under control again, at least, through what few trusted methods he knew he had left available to him, deep meditation being one of them -- but it had turned out that Pine Tree’s query had had _nothing_ to do with what had happened to him in the shower five days ago, and everything to do with what Bill thought was _stupid_ about the whole thing.

After he’d gotten the preliminary ‘this is stupid, you’re all stupid’ parts out of the way, and the prerequisite explanation of how humans didn’t evolve needing showers or baths, that that was just some stupid _rule_ somebody had come up with that not even every culture on the planet had decided to subscribe to, and that he was probably better off not smelling like soap and _human_ to all the stupid magical creatures out there in the woods that had a halfway working sense of smell, anyway (-- _which was most of them_ )...

...Bill had found himself sitting on a upside-down wooden crate in the yard around the back of the Shack, fully-clothed but wearing flip-flops instead of socks and shoes, and waiting with actually a little bit of curiosity to hear from Shooting Star’s own mouth as to what, exactly, constituted a shower under _these_ conditions but _not_ his stipulated non-conditions.

\--Mainly, that he didn’t want to do it, and that he _definitely_ didn’t want to do it _indoors_.

“I can work with that!” had really been the last response he’d expected out of her, at that. ...Well, okay, except for maybe ‘I like nightmares and black-bows!’ -- or some other random thing that had had nothing to do with their conversation -- but nobody ever said things like that except him, so he’d give her that one.

Whatever it was, it was almost certainly going to be interesting -- that much he knew. Stanley had gotten in on the discussion midway through, and Bill might not know much about the upcoming cleansing ritual about to, potentially, take place in the yard there with him, but he _did_ know that apparently it would _not_ involve water balloons, silly string, confetti, or water-absorbent glitter, by mandate of Stanley.

So now here he sat, waiting, with his elbows on his knees and his chin resting on his palms.

Not like he had anything better to do, anyway. --Well, okay, maybe nothing more _pressing_ and _short-term_ that he absolutely **had** to do just then. He was already burning time just by needing to sleep and eat every day; waiting around and burning another hour or two likely wouldn’t kill him. ...Besides, timing _was_ important. And he _was_ a bit curious.

He glanced over as he heard Shooting Star kick open the back door of the Shack. She marched out, carrying a crate full of… _stuff_... and then hopped down off of the porch with it. Pine Tree walked out after her at a more sedate pace.

Bill cocked an eyebrow at her, but she remained undeterred. Hm.

“Kid, that crate’s bigger than the one you’ve got me sitting on,” Bill pointed out to her, raising his head and dropping his hands as she slammed the crate down into the ground next to him, and a few bottles of some sort or another fell out of it. While he eyed the contents of the box, Pine Tree walked over and sat down on a picnic table a couple of yards behind him. “And I may have an all-seeing eye, but I definitely don’t recognize even half of what you’ve got in that thing.” Bill paused for a moment, frowning down at the mess. “Probably because your human bathing stuff is so stupid that I never paid any attention to it,” he mused out loud. He looked back up at her and tilted his head slightly. “What exactly are you planning on doing to me?” Operative word there being ‘planning’, not ‘doing’.

“I’m gonna give you a shower!” she told him brightly.

“Uh-huh,” Bill said blandly, mimicking Stanley without really thinking about it, or noticing.

“Hope you like cold water!” she told him, before running off around the side of the house.

“Uh, _why?_ ” Bill said out loud to himself, staring after her, mystified.

“Because she’s getting out the garden hose, and that’s only cold water,” Pine Tree informed him. Bill glanced back over his shoulder, to see that Pine Tree had pulled out his journal and was writing in it, nose-down.

Bill stared at him for a bit, then turned away and looked down at the crate full of brightly-colored plastic bottles next to him with a bit more of a critical eye. ...Well, at least it was something to read that he definitely hadn’t ever seen before. He reached down and picked up one of the bottles, and gave it the once-over, as Shooting Star came back around the side of the Shack, dragging a long length of garden hose behind her.

Bill tossed the bottle back into the crate as the sound of the plastic hose sliding over grass got closer. “Look, kid--” he began, then got cut off when a torrent of water hit his face.

Bill tumbled backwards off of the box in reaction to the unexpected assault, to the tune of: “Haha, I was just kidding, it’s actually _warm!_ Soos helped me hook it up to the--”

Bill lay on his back, staring up at the sky, shaking slightly as he struggled with his body, trying to determine whether to continue to fight to suppress what felt like a panic reaction -- (he wasn’t sure...) whether to react or not to react (...or rather, _how_ to react?) -- to this… attack?

The deciding factor was something Stanley had told him earlier that he’d been adamant about -- if his body was trying _that hard_ to do something he didn’t understand, _just let it do it_.

“...Uh, Bill?” he heard one of the kids say, not two seconds after he had rolled over onto his side -- in the direction facing away from them -- and started violently coughing, so hard that his limbs curled in on himself instinctively, and what did it say about him that he was so out of it that he couldn’t even tell which one of them had spoken to him?

He heard footsteps approaching from behind him -- stupid of him, to show them his back, stupid physical body reflexes, he knew better than to show weakness **ever** , _stupid-stupid-stupid_ \-- and luckily for him, his body seemed to be finished with hacking up the water that wasn’t supposed to be in it, because he finally managed to catch a breath long enough to breathe in _properly_ and let out a snarl.

He heard a pause in motion, and an “Um,” from Shooting Star, far too close to him by _far_ , and footsteps getting closer again, and _the swish of a plastic hose sliding over the grassy ground_ and Bill’s eyes narrowed because _that was it_ , he was _done_ with this, he clenched his jaw as he got an elbow under him and rolled, shoved his legs under him and _reached_ \--

He shot to his full height with the end of the hose in a death grip in his right hand, pointed towards the ground, and his left hand fisted in Shooting Star’s sweater, pulling her right off of her feet. He held her dangling in his grasp, out almost at full extension away from his chest.

He only barely resisted the urge to shake her until she rattled, and only because he still wasn’t completely sure that what she’d done had actually been ‘an attack’ -- Stanley hadn’t quite gotten to characterizing water-based ones yet, mostly just those involving fists and feet and thrown objects on dry land -- and he’d be _damned_ to be the one to break the mutual nonaggression agreement he had going on with the man first, this was _stupid_ , all of this was _STUPID_ , and--

Shooting Star was yelling, grabbing at his left wrist with both hands, and kicking out at him midair, only failing to connect because of the way he was holding her and her legs being so short, not for lack of trying. Pine Tree was yelling at him, flinging his journal to the side and coming at him, and this was _definitely_ an attack, Bill was **angry**.

He snarled and tossed Shooting Star bodily into her brother, knocking him off of his feet and both of them into the ground.

He advanced on them, stalked towards them predatorially, clenching the garden hose in his fist so hard he could feel the structural integrity of it start to crackle and give, and he had one trillion years of experience literally _screaming_ at him inside his skull to escalate the fight _immediately_ beyond any chance of their survival -- _when they come at you you hit them back twice as hard, when they laugh at you you can’t let it_ go _or you’re_ done _, they won’t respect you ever again because you’re just a triangle, a Flattie, they’ll **question everything** , you _have _to end it, end all of them,_ show no mercy, prove you’re not weak, kill them before they eat you, _**DO IT NOW--**_

He couldn’t, didn’t take his eyes off them as they coughed, rolled over, tried to get their feet under them and their brains working again after the rattling he’d given them -- _they were soft,_ weak _, why had they challenged him,_ they should know better, _**why would they get in his way**_ \--

He came to a stop in front of them, looming over them, hose gripped tightly, held out from his side, teeth bared in a rictus grin -- _get big, look bad, laugh it off as you finish them and it’ll scare the rest, keep them scared, keep them all **scared** \--_

He was _literally_ seeing red, his gaze tinted the wrong shade.

His breathing was off.

...Stanley had told him about this.

Bill closed his eyes, snarled in frustration, turned and threw the end of the hose at the side of the Shack, and kept turning away.

He snapped open his eyes and stomped away in the exact opposite direction of the pair of them, fists clenching and unclenching and shoulders rigid as he headed straight for the treeline.

He couldn’t _look_ at them, couldn’t _think_ about them without vivid pictures of the pair’s destruction flitting across his brain -- and it would be _so_ easy to break them! Make them regret ever--

Bill shook his head, hard.

...So he looked away from them, moved away from them at a quick pace instead, trying to keep the agreement. He tried counting to ten in increments of one second, like Stanley had told him to try doing if he _ever_ got so mad that he ‘saw red’, and thoughts of violence kept interrupting his count, forcing him to start all over again.

He really, truly hated Stanley Pines, because being able to count to ten with a clear mind, _without_ thinking of every single way he could _break_ them and thus break the agreement he had with him, _should_ have been easy. It had _sounded_ laughably easy when Stanley had said it. So had ‘exiting the situation’ by walking away, and he was nearly shaking with the need to turn around and go right back there and pound them into the dirt.

This should not be this hard!

Bill was breathing heavily, and he _couldn’t calm down_.

He opened his mouth and let out a bloody enraged _SCREAM_ as he crossed the treeline into the forest, trying to let out the anger that way, instead.

It didn’t really help.

\---

Grunkle Stan was reading the newspaper at the kitchen table when Dipper and Mabel walked in, not quite clinging to each other and dirty from rolling across the ground.

“So, how far did you get in your explanation before he said ‘no’?” Grunkle Stan asked blandly, not looking over at the two of them.

“E-explanation?” Dipper stammered with a cracking voice, holding his left arm. “He _attacked_ us!”

Great Uncle Ford, who had just walked into the room, said, “Attacked you? Who attacked you?”

Grunkle Stan frowned and glanced over, then tossed the paper down onto the table and turned to face them.

“What happened?” their grunkle asked, his eyes roving over the two of them as he gestured them over. “You two okay?”

“I-- I--” Mabel stammered, close to tears as she hugged her arms around her torso.

“Okay, okay,” Grunkle Stan said, getting up and walking over to crouch down in front of her and pull her into a hug. He looked to Dipper with a steady frown, wanting an explanation.

“Mabel just sprayed him with the hose a bit and he went _nuts_ ,” Dipper said, rubbing at his arm, feeling a little guilty but not really sure why.

“Who attacked you?!” Great Uncle Ford repeated with a frown, drawing his coat away from his sidearm.

“-- _Are you okay_ ,” Grunkle Stan asked again, and Dipper nodded, then grimaced.

“I’m-- okay, I guess,” he muttered. “He grabbed Mabel and threw her into me,” he said.

“Mabel? Sweetie?” Grunkle Stan asked, laying a hand on her head.

Mabel muttered something into Grunkle Stan’s shirt that Dipper couldn’t hear, but from the way their grunkle relaxed, it had to have been a negative, telling him that she wasn’t hurt. Physically.

“--Grunkle Stan, he _looked like he was going to kill us!_ ” Dipper protested, because, “He _scared_ Mabel!”

“ **Bill** ,” Dipper heard Great Uncle Ford growl out, and their great-uncle turned and rushed out the door to the Shack.

“Ford, don’t-- … _Great_ ,” Grunkle Stan said sarcastically, rubbing a hand across his eyes, under his glasses. “That’s gonna go well.”

“Grunkle Stan--” Dipper began insistently.

“I’ll get him to apologize to you later,” Grunkle Stan said, looking up at him again. “Can’t believe the triangle let you try and toss water at his head,” he muttered.

Oh, no. ...And now Dipper knew why he felt a little guilty, even though he didn’t mean to.

And worse, Grunkle Stan picked up on it.

“He _did_ just make a dumb decision and _let_ you try and toss water at his head, _right?_ ” Grunkle Stan said, in descending tones.

Dipper winced.

“I--” Dipper looked away.

Mabel sniffled, wiping away tears. “...Dip-dop?” she said, sounding unsure and confused.

“I-- he-- Mabel was _going_ to explain,” Dipper said defensively.

“You-- ...ugh,” Grunkle Stan said, rubbing at his forehead. “You sprayed him. Without saying anything.”

Mabel looked up at their grunkle with wide eyes. “...Grunkle Stan, did I do something wrong?” she asked tearily, sounding almost worried.

Grunkle Stan sighed.

“This is why I told you two to tell him what you wanted to do, and get him to say yes, before doing anything,” he told them dourly.

Dipper winced.

“...Bill’s not taking baths because he’s afraid of water?” Mabel said, sounding sniffly, but also a little annoyed. “Why didn’t he just _say_ that?”

“Eh, it’s not him being _afraid_ of water so much as…” Grunkle Stan pulled a face and made a weird gesture.

“You don’t know,” said Dipper.

“Haven’t gotten him to talk about it, yet,” Grunkle Stan told him. “Didn’t want to push him too hard.”

He sent Dipper a _look_.

“He only collapsed or something last time,” Dipper muttered, shoving his hands in his pockets. “I didn’t think he’d _freak out_ this time!”

“He _collapsed?_ ” Mabel gasped. “In the shower?” Then she looked mad. “--Tuesday night. He was all wet when you carried him downstairs in his boxer shorts.” She shoved at Grunkle Stan. “--Why didn’t either of you _tell_ me!”

“Because he wouldn’t talk about it. Whatever happened,” Grunkle Stan said. “Figured you might actually get it out of him.”

Mabel huffed out a breath. “You two--!”

Dipper flinched when he heard several electric gunshots go off outside, in quick succession. So did Mabel, startled.

Grunkle Stan, for his part, grimaced.

“You two, go upstairs and get cleaned up,” he told them as he stood up. “I’ll handle this.”

“Grunkle Stan, I’m _sorry_ ,” Mabel said, almost desperately.

“Not your fault, sweetie,” he said, patting her on the head and then rushing out a bit quickly.

Dipper looked over at Mabel, who was staring at the floor. “Mabel…”

She wiped at her right eye again, then looked up, determined.

“I’m _gonna_ find a way to give him a bath that’s okay!” she said firmly, before turning around and marching upstairs.

Dipper let out a tired sigh, and followed her.

\---

“Stanley--!” Ford protested as his brother hustled him into the house.

“That’s enough outta you,” he was told, as he was being pushed towards the living room.

“Enough out of _me?!_ ” Ford said, outraged, as Stanley gave him a shove and he had to stumble to regain balance. “ _You’re_ the one who thought it would be a good idea to leave the kids alone with _Bill Cipher_ out in the yard, unsupervised!”

“Wendy was watching them from the window in the gift shop, and Soos was around nearby,” Stanley informed him. “If there's been a big problem, Wendy would’ve been out there with her axe.”

“I was halfway out the door, until I saw him turn around and head for the woods,” Wendy told them in a drawl, following them in from the gift shop.

“See?” said Stanley.

“That’s not good enough!” Ford protested. “She was at the porch, they were in the yard!”

“Could’a thrown my axe,” Wendy put out there.

“And he stopped,” Stanley reminded him. “On his own. It was fine.”

“In what world was that fine, Stanley,” Ford groused. “He terrorized the niblings!”

“And they terrorized him first,” Stan said.

“With a simple spray of water?!”

Stanley let out a huff of breath.

“You know I’m right, Stanley,” Ford told him.

“No, Ford, I don’t,” Stanley told him. “And the next time you go after the triangle like that, I’m not saving your sorry ass.”

“Saving my--??!! _I_ was just fine!” Ford protested.

“Uh huh,” Stanley said, sounding thoroughly unimpressed, as if _Ford_ hadn’t been the one with clear advantage over Cipher in that situation.

Ford glanced over at the Corduroy girl, and caught the same unimpressed expression.

“Am I missing something here, Stanley?” he said, feeling aggravated.

“Yeah,” Stanley said. “You’re missing the part where you just tried to take on an immortal alien space wizard _outside_ your voodoo-stopping barrier,” Stanley informed him, “with a sci-fi gun that _won’t_ kill him.”

Ford huffed. “Well, when you put it that way…” he allowed, feeling almost a touch embarrassed. He shook his head. “But he’s hardly alien now,” Ford corrected him, “or anything close to invulnerable in his now-human state. I can take care of myself, Stanley!” he told his brother. “And I doubt that Bill can perform any ‘space wizardry’, as you put it, even outside the barrier, or he would have done so already.”

Stanley and Wendy shared a look.

“Stanley, he hasn’t actually been…” Ford trailed off. “You haven’t _actually_ seen him--”

“Man, I am not touching that one with a ten-foot pole,” Wendy said when he looked at her, holding up her hands.

“Pretty sure he wasn’t running away from you, dodging behind those trees, for his _health_ , Ford,” Stanley put out there, walking away from him towards the kitchen.

Ford frowned after him, because while Stanley’s words seemed to agree with him, his tone seemed to indicate the opposite.

“Stanley, what are you--” Ford began, moving after him.

Apropos of nothing, they all suddenly heard a very loud roar rattle its way through the open kitchen window into the Shack, coming from the direction of the forest where they’d all just been.

Ford frowned, because, “Wait, was that a--”

His thought process came to a screeching halt when said roar was closely followed by a rather loud but garbled sounding Bill-like yell, and then an earth-shattering 'ka-BOOM!’ resounded from the same direction.

Ford turned his head and looked out the window, to take in the sight of a dust cloud slowly rising above the treetops.

He stared.

“Uh,” he heard Stanley say. He turned to see his brother plastering on what he now recognized as his ‘Mr. Mystery’ smile. “Heh, those bears. Amiright?”

Ford narrowed his eyes at him. “Stanley, that wasn’t a--”

“--Yup, those crazy, crazy bears. Bears that need bear traps. Bad for business.” Stanley said, still in ‘Mr. Mystery’ mode. He raised a finger. “That was probably one of mine. Gotta love explosives! I’m gonna go check up on that!” he said brightly, smile still plastered in place as he backed away, then turned on his heel and hurried his way out the door at a fairly fast clip.

“Uh,” said Wendy. “I’m just… gonna get back to cash register duty,” she said, pointing her thumbs over her shoulder as she backed away. “Yeah…” Then she turned and sauntered out into the gift shop area almost as quickly as Stanley had booked it out of his general vicinity.

Ford stared after them both, aghast.

Dipper and Mabel both made their way partway down the stairs. They had towels and were rubbing at their hair; they looked like they’d both been showering recently.

“Great Uncle Ford, did you hear something just now?” Dipper asked him uncertainly.

Ford rubbed his face with his hands.

\---


End file.
